Box Office Oddity - The Saw Factor

Lionsgate has got a real cash cow on its hands. No, I'm not talking about Tyler Perry, though he's
earned the studio a pretty penny with his movies in recent years. I mean the Saw films. For no apparent reason
other than the fact that they roll out at Halloween, the movies have become a staggering financial success. Despite
growing arguably worse with each passing movie, they continue to rake in the money, severed hand over
bloody fist. With Saw IV coming out right on cue next weekend, the question isn't how bad it's
going to be, but how much money it's going to rake in anyway.

While the first movie was somewhat clever and original (a quality I value in any movie), many
would argue that the Saw films started going downhill fast when the second movie rolled out (CB's Rafe Telsch disagrees, but I
think he has a thing for Dina Meyer). Some say the third movie was where things turned sour, but people
still turned out in droves to see it. At this point pretty much everyone (even horror fans) seem to have the
lowest of expectations for Saw IV, but if history is any indication, the promise of a lousy movie isn't likely to keep audiences
away.

Of course no one expects these movies to be works of art. They're horror movies. You don't go see
them for the witty dialogue or brilliant acting. You to see them to watch people doing stupid, scary
things in the hopes that you will be scared yourself. Still, at some point the stupid outweighs the
scary and the franchise becomes a complete waste of time. It happened to all the greats: Nightmare On
Elm Street, Friday the 13th and so on. Somewhere along the way the franchise goes from the
good kind of bad to the bad kind of bad. And yet, even if you walked out of Saw II swearing you'd
never spend another dime on those crappy Saw sequels, people can't seem to help themselves ( you're in good
company, though, with CB's Mack Rawden).

Each movie has made more cash than the one before it. And since they're made on shoestring
budgets they turn wild profits, almost guaranteeing that we'll be seeing Jigsaw in theaters for many
Halloweens to come. Though the movies get progressively worse, more and more people go to see them. And
it's not just in the U.S. It's a phenomenon that spans the globe. There's no denying it. The numbers
don't lie. I've laid them out for you below. Behold them, one of the greatest mysteries of our time.